below the freezing point
by TheMayBellTree
Summary: Shuichi Saihara sat in front of a bloodied hydraulic press and waited. (Mastermind!Saihara)


Shuichi Saihara sat in front of a bloodied hydraulic press and waited.

Kaito Momota,

or Kokichi Ouma.

Either Kaito was gone, or Ouma was gone.

 _Which one?_

Pink blood just thick enough to drench his skin waded through his clothing, soaking the alabaster folds beneath. It felt soothing. It felt refreshing.

It reminded him of just how real death was. How sweet death was. How loving and kind and _accepting_ it was.

Kokichi Ouma,

or Kaito Momota.

Shuichi knew what death was. He knew what life was. He knew the delicate balance between the two, he knew how quickly life could vanish; he had seen enough _Danganronpa_ to know the exact moment that a person's soul left their body and ceased to be their own, corpse waiting to be manhandled or fucked or killed again and again and _again._

He loved _Danganronpa_ , really.

Kokichi or Momota.

The blood soaked him now, droplets getting into the ends of his hair and dripping straight down into his eyes. It felt like _he_ was dying.

He wondered how death felt.

In Ouma's last moments, did he feel fear, did his facade finally crack, did he give into his will after all and cry and sob and despair?

In Momota's last moments, had he given up all hope, had he lost trust, had he vowed to do whatever it took to end the killing game?

Yes, Shuichi liked death. It really brought out the best in a person, no matter how much the best might be masqueraded by the common folk as the _worst_ in a person. People were just that straight and narrow, simplistic and dull and vain and disgusting.

" _Don't give up, don't give up! Reach the finish line, Shuichi!_ "

Yes, people were one-dimensional creatures. Shuichi was different. He was special. He knew people and he saw through people. He wasn't a character. He was Shuichi. He was his own person, with his own mind, with his own hands, with his own blood and his own heartbeat and his own disgusting, gross fetishes of snuff and rape.

 _Were Ouma and Momota the same?_

They were characters. Ouma was abrasive and tactless on the best of days, and Momota was far too trusting for his own good. Their flaws rooted them to the earth and reminded them just how _human_ they really were, characters be damned.

Was that it?

Was that all they were?

 _Yes._

No.

Ouma was clever and surprisingly emotional, no matter what mask he donned or persona he tried to bury. He definitely had the potential to end the killing game. That's why Shuichi had to give out that flashback light. He was dangerous. The contestants had to know how dangerous he was, even if it took a straight up lie to get there. That was always his motto, wasn't it?

Momota was the opposite. He wasn't dumb by any means and he still had a good grasp on his emotions (no matter how much his hero complex thwarted any real personal connection). His real strength didn't lie there. His strength lied in his flaw: trust. He was able to believe in people, unlike Ouma. That's the only key distinction between them, really. Besides that, they were awfully similar, weren't they?

Awfully similar and awfully different. Awfully clever and awfully naive. Awfully distant and awfully close. And for one of them, awfully murderous.

Shuichi felt like he was falling. His throat spilt blood and mucus, sweat and tears, love and hate and everything in between.

Did he feel remorse?

 _No._

Did he feel regret?

 _Of course not._

Then why did he feel so empty?

…

Momota had looked at him with trust. He'd betrayed that, didn't he? Just as he'd let Kaede be strung up by a rope and crushed by a grand piano. He didn't feel remorse for that either.

 _(The tears had all been fake.)_

Ouma had made him curious. He had followed his own pre-designed character around, interested by his flaws, interested by his theories, interested in his sudden attempt to usurp Shuichi of his rightful throne. It had really backfired, hadn't it?

Shuichi gave a dry laugh and lifted his hand to his lips. It smelled of metallic rust, like the person under the press had been crushed into a fine, bloodied, periodic powder.

When he licked his hand, he felt agony and sorrow. He felt hurt. He felt the emotions that the victim must've been feeling, all bundled up into a single droplet of blood. It must've hurt to be crushed to death. Shuichi wondered if the tales of time slowing down as you die were factual or fiction.

The darkest, deepest depths of his soul told him to hope that the stories were true, that the person under the press had felt every single one of his bones snapping and cracking and had felt all of his pores open up and implode.

The top layers of his mind stopped that line of thinking and hoped that their death had been quick and insignificant. Meaningless. Nugatory. That would really be despair-inducing, wouldn't it?

If an afterlife existed, he imagined that they'd be staring down at him right now, watching him lick up their splendiferous, bloody smoothie from the palm of his hand and feel complete and utter betrayal, heartbreak, and angsty deliverance at the fact that the ultimate detective, their only hope in the vast, despairful emptiness of a gross killing game, was actually the true ringleader all along.

No matter who lied under the press, Shuichi knew that death, as permanent and disgusting as it was, didn't seem all that bad.

ooo

Shuichi later realized that time really did slow down in the moments before death.

Getting crushed hurt like a bitch.

 **i don't even know what the fuck**

 **I decided I needed to write some HARDCORE angst after writing a lot of "me: i love you" I guess. And that last line was just funny to me for some reason lmao**

 **Anyways, please leave a review telling me what you thought!**

 **Twitter:**  
 **M_BTree (you can request works here)**

 **Seeya!**


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